young Englishmen and Americans who described themselves as
"attaches" and "consular couriers" and "diplomatic messengers,"
and who intimated that they were engaged in all sorts of dangerous
and important missions. Many of these were adventurous young
men of means who had "come over to see the fun" and who had
induced the American diplomatic representatives in London and
The Hague to give them dispatches of more or less importance--
usually less than more--to carry through to Antwerp and Brussels. In
at least one instance the official envelopes with the big red seals
which they so ostentatiously displayed contained nothing but sheets
of blank paper. Their sole motive was in nearly all cases curiosity.
They had no more business wandering about the war-zone than
they would have had wandering about a hospital where men were
dying. Belgium was being slowly strangled; her villages had been
burned, her fields laid waste, her capital was in the hands of the
enemy, her people were battling for their national existence; yet
these young men came in and demanded first-row seats, precisely
as though the war was a spectacle which was being staged for their
special benefit.

One youth, who in his busy moments practised law in Boston,
though quite frankly admitting that he was only actuated by curiosity,
was exceedingly angry with me because I declined to take him to
the firing-line. He seemed to regard the desperate battle which was
then in progress for the possession of Antwerp very much as
though it was a football game in the Harvard stadium; he seemed
to think that he had a right to see it. He said that he had come all the
way from Boston to see a battle, and when I remained firm in my
refusal to take him to the front he intimated quite plainly that I was
no gentleman and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than